by Alan Burns
“Do some proper reading. Less newspapers and politics. You’re old enough to read the classics. Only real learning counts.” Dan took War and Peace from his father’s bookcase and read it in five weeks. He talked about Pierre,* who proved his philosophy by algebra. In each letter Bryan told him to work hard and look after his mother.
Bryan came home on leave and told them he had been posted to India. He tied a knot in the corner of his handkerchief and danced it round the table, like a raja with a turban. “It takes more than a world war to get you down,” his father said.
“When I die put three hundredweight of marble on my grave, and inscribe it: ‘Laugh This One Off’,” Bryan replied.
At school Dan tried to study, had few friends, rarely wrote home. Each term he won the form prize for poetry speaking. He enjoyed standing alone on the broad stage, pronouncing the words of poems perfectly, making his voice break with emotion. He received his prize to a patter of clapping.
In the holidays there were air raids. An oil bomb dropped on the park. It seemed more real than other bombs: a tank of oil falling from up there onto the ground. Oil seemed heavier than steel. A morning bomb shattered the bathroom windows, covering the floor with powdery glass. His mother screamed and wept: “Your father always shaves at eight o’clock, and today he didn’t. Thank God. Thank God. There is a God, after all!”
Dan helped her sweep up the glass; she held the newspaper while he swept the glass onto it. The monkey vase had got broken, so he went out for some Seccotine.*
Where the corner newsagent had been still smelt of charred wood and dusty rubble. He wondered about the paper bill.
At home his mother called from the kitchen: “Mend it in here, Danny, and keep me company. And put some newspaper on the table so the glue won’t make so much mess.”
“It will make the same mess, but it won’t matter so much,” he said.
He popped the monkeys into the vase and said he’d like his Rolls Royce with grey Hooper coachwork.* The cat got a piece of paper glued to his fur, and raced round the kitchen, chased by the paper. They laughed, and she hugged him till he had to push away to breathe, still laughing.
One morning, very early, he started off to cycle into the country. He heard his mother running after him.
“Wait, Danny. I’ll walk with you a little way. I’m taking some cheesecake over to Dolly’s. Jack’s not well.”
He called back: “I must get to Hertford by lunchtime.” But he waited for her, and they went along together, she holding the handlebar while he rocked his feet against the pedals. He wobbled over the road.
“I must get on,” he said, impatient.
He heard the hum of a plane.
“Please leave, go.”
Heavy sound of the plane, throbbing. Gurrum-gurrumgurrumgurrum loudsoft loudsoft loudsoft a heart. He was fifty yards down the street when the noise stopped and the thought flashed “Buzzbomb”. Roar and boom into his eyes. The front wheel yanked sideways. He felt his elbow slithering against asphalt. His sleeve filled with blood. He ran to his mother. She lay on her back, stretched out as he had seen her sunbathing in the garden. Only her foot seemed twisted. The weight of that foot on the ground. The brown-leather shoe, lace pulled tight and neat, double bow tied precisely. The leather had the glow that comes from unthinking morning polishing over years, brown turning to black with work. The force of the blow against the asphalt road had torn open the outer leather in one place, exposing its yellow inside like the slit belly of a pus-filled pig.
A policeman wrote in his notebook: “Scratch on left shoe approx one inch”. The foot had a slight unnatural twist at the ankle. She could not have bent her foot like that if she had been alive. The difference was small – an angle of ten degrees. But alive she could not have done it without breaking the bone, gouging one bone into the other, wrenching the muscle enough to make her scream with pain or come as near to screaming as an ill middle-aged woman can – not a young clean scream, but a choke, a sob, a cough, a constriction in the throat caused by too much trying to escape at one time. Weight is being drawn into the earth, pulled to the middle of it. Her foot weighed.
“She’s bought it,” the policeman said.
He dragged the body into a doorway beside a butcher’s shop. He bawled up a steep flight of stairs: “Someone give us a ’and?”
A man came downstairs. He unlocked a door into the shop and helped carry the body inside. Dan could see them standing up in the shop, the body between them on the sawdust floor. They took no notice of him. He ran up the stairs and stood on the unfamiliar landing. A door was partly open, and through the E-shaped gap he saw a woman in a yellow electric-lit room. She wore a yellow flowered dressing gown. She was kneeling in front of a fireplace, trying to pull the string from a bundle of firewood. It caught on splinters. She poked one stick through, then another, then two or three at a time until the whole bundle collapsed. She threw the sticks on crumpled newspaper. She added small coal to the pile, then put a match to it. She dropped the string on the flames.
He was freewheeling downhill homewards. He had ridden into the country, as far as Hertford. Smoke rose straight from the chimney. Through the windows he saw his father playing chess.
He stood in the dining room, waiting for the solemn talk. He looked at her empty chair, remembered seeing her white bottom once when he’d gone into their bedroom without knocking.
He was taken upstairs to the spare room. He had stationed hundreds of lead soldiers over the floor, flicked marbles at them. An unused bookcase held Bryan’s old books – Left Book Club, Thinker’s Library.* He tried to cry.
“You’d better go back to school. It would be best.”
“But it’s the holidays. There’ll be no one there.”
“Never mind. We’ll ring them up.”
From the country railway station he cycled to school: through the village, along a muddy lane, bumping down into puddled hollows, watching the marks of tyres in thin mud. The camouflaged waterworks crawled with yellow monsters. His head felt queer, like blotting paper. He stopped. He looked up at the flat sky. It was empty except for those specks floating past his eyes, which he knew were caused by minute particles slipping between the retina and the iris and slowly easing down.
That term he missed the big food parcels from home. So he stole from the food cupboard: he slid back the brown door just a few inches, pushed his hand inside and picked up whatever was nearest – a bar of chocolate, a tin of sardines.
He was senior enough to have a study. He shared with Michael – a smooth-faced neat boy whose father was a Member of Parliament. Michael was to enter politics.
“I think my first step will be to obtain a position in local government,” he told Dan.
“A job with the Council? I wouldn’t do that.”
“Why?”
“Haven’t you seen that notice on their carts? It reads: ‘Gratuities forbidden’. I’d like a job where you can make something on the side.”
Michael talked about his family – proudly of his father, glowingly of his sister. Dan was invited to Sunday lunch. The father gave him orangeade and remarked that the weather was pretty frightful for cricket. Dan said that today was not good, but it was better than yesterday. The day before had been perhaps a little better than yesterday, but not quite so good as today. Tomorrow the position would be complicated still further, and the day after that the complexity would become unbearable. Suicide, and an eternity of good (or bad) days, seemed the only solution. Michael got the biggest helpings of roast beef; his sister was tall and wore thick stockings. Over lunch Dan talked about incest and the Oedipus complex.
Michael used the study less often. Dan enjoyed being alone. He ate fingerfuls of Radio Malt.* He looked up words in the dictionary. Rape is an administrative division of Surrey. He began to write an epic poem. He borrowed his brother’s typewriter. His father sent him a ream of fool
scap typing paper. Dan typed on the first sheet a word: “Onion”. And then, brilliantly: “Man. Onion Man”. What a picture! Was there another mind in the school that could have conceived it? In the whole county of Gloucestershire, in England, Europe, the Universe? Time was grander. Multiply together all the billions of minds and moments there had ever been – had one once deliberately and self-consciously thought: Onion Man? Pause. Knowledge. How many men there were whose life was onions, whose sons had onion seller owner eater dealer digger dads. Uniqueness demanded disjointedness. Irrelevance was the key. To onion add the word least like onion…
He was picked for the house chess team, and decided to become a professional. His father sent him untidy parcels of books by Lasker and Capablanca,* and he swotted the first chapters. He played chess with Montague, who had been brought up in Chicago and Paris, had a motorbike, girlfriends, cigars, coloured waistcoats and a thousand gramophone records, which he and Dan listened to on sports afternoons. They conversed about composers.
Of course the move from Beethoven to Brahms reflected the growing complexity of the contradictions inherent in capitalist society,” said Dan.
“Say, bud, you don’t say so!” Montague replied.
“Yeah, Clodface, I do say so.”
The music formed a background to Dan’s thoughts about himself.
They played word games.
“Describe midsummer in terms of sound,” Montague said.
“Beethoven’s Ninth performed by an orchestra with ten million first violins and the Massed Choirs of the Universe. And midwinter?”
“The sound made when T.S. Eliot taps his teeth with his spectacles.”
They discussed genius. Was Dan a genius?
“You’re obsessed with the word,” Montague said.
“But what does it mean?”
“Genius is another name for pride,” said his friend, “and pride is the cardinal virtue.”
“Genius is the ability to achieve extraordinary things,” said Dan.
“No, it is the achievement, by work, of extraordinary things. For example, could you spend the entire week at school, saying only ‘fish paste’?”
“I am unique and I will amaze people,” said Dan.
“Unique? That’s very ordinary. And who fails to amaze their mo— father?” his friend asked.
“Aren’t you a genius?”
“You mean will I exchange recognition? I’m afraid not. You remain the supplicant.”
Soon after he was made a prefect, Dan walked into Montague’s form room:
“You’re making a shocking noise. This is a sixth form and should be an example to the others.”
They looked at him, silent. Montague was smiling. “And don’t smile when you are being admonished.”
As he left he heard his friend’s French-American drawl: “Quel sang froid! Quel savoir-faire!”*
The boy bent over correctly and touched his toes. The skin on his bare legs and buttocks stretched tight. He was trembling.
“The other way,” Dan said.
The boy straightened a little, touched the edge of the washstand with his hands. He was thirteen. At the daily “hands inspection” he had been caught three times with dirty fingernails. The traditional punishment was a caning by the duty prefect. Dan wanted to thrash him. He was beautiful, and Dan wanted to hurt and bruise him. He let the cane touch the boy’s skin.
“Get to bed. You’re lucky this time.”
Dan was reprimanded. He said he could not support capital punishment – no, he meant corporal punishment. The dignity of man, Tom Paine,* scientific humanism, principles. His prefect’s tie, red with a gold stripe, was formally taken away from him at a special ceremony in the prefects’ common room.
“You have precisely one hour left, gentlemen.” The invigilator’s plummy voice, artificial as a bishop’s, sounded through the examination hall. Dan’s school-leaving certificate: English Literature. The main question read: “Dr Johnson was the Hero of his Age. Discuss.”
Dan wrote:
Johnson in the Modern Eye*
Johnson was god. And typical of his age. Era of Goodsense worship, sameness the ultimate ideal, piggery and prudery rife, nonsense wisdom, pomposity prestige.
So the Nightmareman Must – mountain of conventional revulsion, foul-mannered filth loving big boar beast – of course he Must be part of every mantelpiece. A great lumping tasteless victorian grandfather clock, stumpgomping on top of and right through the pretty coffee cups and sniki simplicities. How he bounds! And Boswell is his weak-tea shadowAnd the drawingroom clusters and the Dryden Chandelier and the Johnson and the titters are blushed and the boom begins… he would not like little cracker nuts but with big lumping joll stump off with blugging beaf hunks. And guzzle. And cover his ear with gravy. And guffaw. And stuck his feet and glush his mouth
the modern dainty mind reflects recedes back back
But now when the cooling stonily creeps me and I can see him just plain big, not glumping, clumsy yes but his thud was live and he jollily glowed in thrilling proudness of town and culture and coffee house fine conversation and rightness (who will read it?) of the good occasion and the truth
And he warms his behind by the redfire large and lust and he glows. His great brown pipe I can see in his great brown fist and his boots. Gleaming black and sturdy. The socks must be wool (hand woven quite good) and the lack of a bath quite foul. I’m here and I’m now away from the stench feast and the big fugfor I’m modern and fine young man.
“Idiot!” Montague said. “They’ll fail you.”
Dan knew it. He felt sick.
“I won’t fail. I don’t care if I fail. I’ll show them. I won’t join the army. I won’t get a job. I won’t queue. I’d rather walk. I’ll go to London. I’ll get a girl and go up west. She’ll curve and have a curvy dress. I’ll jive with her. I’ll sling her round the room. I’ll pull her between my legs. She’ll be jumping mad. I’ll kiss her cheeks. I’ll slap her bum till it stings. I’ll burn her name on my arm. I’ll sleep with her. I’ll sleep in the park. I’ll get soaked. I’ll march. Hope it pours. Hope we get soaked and drenched and drowned. I’ll have a long wet crazy beard. I’ll slosh through the gutters. I’ll smash their windows. I’ll yell. I’ll knife you. I’m going up west. Coming? We’re dead tomorrow.”
“I’m not coming,” Montague said.
Chapter 3
Plank from collar to bum. Head back, eyes set, chin in, shoulders back, tummy in, bottom in, legs straight, heels together, feet at an angle of forty-five degrees, thumbs stretched down the seams of the trousers. Cap band polished, best serge pressed and creased to cut, webbing belt and straps tight, clean and tough, pack emptied, cut square and plywood-stiffened, slices of brass set slick as a flick knife, polished to whiteness. Cap, collar, pack, each precisely parallel to concrete slabs beneath the boots. Boots. Eyeblinding, scintillating brilliant boots.
The cartoon brigadier treads slowly by, unbelievably moustachioed, inspecting.
“Completed basic training?”
“Sir!”
“Category?”
“Clerk. General duties. Sir!”
“Enjoying the army?”
“Sir!”
Behind, walls of dirt. Deadgrey walls, dirt colour. Narrow jail windows. The plaster, hard and flaky with age, crumbles: at a touch powdered wall snows on the scrubbed wood floor. Rifles will not be leant against walls.
Condemned as uninhabitable each year since 1905, Talavera Barracks were most suitable for the accommodation of national servicemen during basic training.
“Carry on, Sergeant Major.”
“D-i-i-i-i-is-miss!”
A thousand men swivel right on the right heel, bring left leg up till thigh is parallel to the ground: crunching crash as a thousand boots slam down.
The men grumbled across the parade
ground. They went to the NAAFI,* queued for tea, strained forwards to see the cakes and bacon sandwiches and Irish girls and sausage and mash. The food was served on Bakelite plates by girls in sexless overalls.
The Church of England hall had dusty lampshades and cobwebs on the walls, and you were served by old ladies in floral dresses and hairnets and spectacles. On Tuesdays the NAAFI had cod and chips and the C of E was empty. As usual the ladies apologized for not having “frying facilities”.
“We’ve applied so often, but there isn’t the money today.”
Though tonight was cod night, Dan preferred to sit alone in the C of E with Titbits and a cup of tea. He had just heard that the NAAFI put something in the tea “to make you sleep well”.
“I don’t like being done good to on the sly,” he said.
He worried about his rifle. The bolt was missing. How could it have happened? Bayonet practice tomorrow. Bound to be rifle inspection. And some idiot had kicked his toecap on parade. Need a good two hours’ work to get it right again. They said burning the leather with a hot iron gave a smooth surface that polished up beautifully. It was a gamble. Perhaps it would ruin them. That bolt. “Pull bolt back for inspection of magazine.” Had he failed to “ram bolt securely home” so that it had slipped back onto the ground? He left the canteen quickly and ran to the parade ground. He tried to find the spot where his section had been having rifle instruction. It was dark. He got down on his knees to look. The smooth-looking concrete was rough and jagged to touch. Like a razor blade under a microscope.
“See a pin, pick it up, and all that day you’ll be in the bleedin’ shit. What the hell are you doing?”
It was Bert.
“Riding a bloody bicycle. I’m looking for my rifle bolt,” said Dan.
“Blimey! It shouldn’t happen to me ma-in-law. You’ll get ten years jankers!”
